1975
BRUCE MCCALL
ROLLED IN RARE BOHEMIAN ONYX, THEN VULCANIZED BY HAND
DEAR Eminent Patron of the Mail Order Arts,
Imagine a collector’s item so exquisitely detailed that each is actually invisible to the naked eye.
Think of an heirloom so limited in availability that when you order it, the mint specially constructed to craft it will be demolished.
Ponder an item so precious that its value has actually tripled since you began reading this.
KILN-FIRED IN EDIBLE 24-CALORIE SILVER
Never before in human history has the Polk McKinley Harding Coolidge Mint (not a U.S. Government body) commissioned such a rarity.
Consider: miniature pewterine reproductions, authenticated by the World Court at The Hague and sent to you in moisture-resistant Styrofoam chests, of the front-door letter slots of Hollywood’s 36 most beloved character actors and actresses.
A special blue-ribbon Advisory Panel will insure that the Foundation Council’s certificated and inscribed insignia is approved by Her Majesty’s Master of Heralds before the application deadline.
Meanwhile, they are yours to inspect in the privacy of your home, office, shop, or den for twenty years by express permission, already withdrawn, of the Polk McKinley Harding Coolidge Mint—the only mint authorized to stamp your application with its own seal.
The equivalent of three centuries of painstaking historical research, supervised by the U.S. Bureau of Mines, has preceded this issue of The Ornamental Handles of the Walking Canes of the Hohenzollern Princelings.
Our miniature craftsmen have designed, cast, struck, etched, forged, and finished these authentic reproductions—not available in any store, even before they were commissioned—literally without regard for quality.
CERTIFIED BY THE AMERICAN KENNEL CLUB
But now, through a special arrangement with the Postmaster General of the Republic of San Marino, this 72-piece commemorative plinth, honoring The Footprints of the Great Jewel Thieves of the French Riviera—each encased in its own watered-silk caddy that revolves 360 degrees on genuine Swedish steel ball bearings—has been cancelled.
A unique way, you will agree, of introducing you and your loved ones to The Great Cookie Jars of the Restoration, just as Congreve the boy must have pilfered from.
They are so authentic that you can actually smell them with your nose.
And don’t forget: every set of hand-fired porcelain reproductions of The Padlocks of the Free World’s Great Customs Houses comes sealed in an airtight cask, fashioned after the shoe locker of a Mogul emperor so famous that we are prohibited from disclosing his name.
12 MEN DIED TO MAKE THE INGOTS PERFECT
But why, as a prudent investor, should you spend thousands of dollars, every month for a lifetime, to acquire this 88-piece set of Official Diplomatic License Plates of the World’s Great Governments-in-Exile?
One Minnesota collector comments, “I never expected to buy an item so desirable that it has already kept its haunting fascination forever.”
But even this merely hints at the extraordinary investment potential of the Connoisseur’s Choice selection of Great Elevator Inspection Certificates of the World’s Tallest Buildings.
Molded in unobtainable molybdenum, each is precision-ejected from a flying aircraft to check a zinc content that must measure .000000003 per cent or the entire batch will be melted down, discarded, and forgotten.
But “keepsake” is an inadequate term. Your Jubilee Edition of the 566 Tunic Buttons of the World’s Legendary Hotel Porters will take you from New York City to San Francisco to Hong Kong to Bombay … and then actually pay your way back home.
There is one more aspect for you to consider before refusing this offer.
If you wish, you can have The Lavaliere Mikes of TV’s Greatest Talk Show Celebrity Guests, custom-mounted on driftwood plaques that serve as 175 dainty TV snack tables—free.
There is, of course, a surcharge and a handling fee, as well as the 25 percent duplication cost. But so amazing is this offer that you need only pay this levy once—and never again be bothered by it in your mortal life.
If for whatever reason you elect not to purchase the complimentary Tokens of the World’s Great Subway Systems, you still profit:
The solid-gold Venetian Gondolier’s Boat Pole Toothpick and velvet-lined presentation case are yours to treasure for as long as this incredible offer lasts.
Our Distinctive Axe Marks of the Immortal Brazilian Rubber Planters are in such short supply that an advance application in your name is already reserved for you. To protect your investment, none will be made.
REGISTERED WITH THE DEPARTMENT OF MOTOR VEHICLES
A dazzling proposition, you will agree. If you do not, your 560-piece set of Belgium’s Most Cherished Waffle Patterns, together with your check or money order, will be buried at sea on or before midnight, April 15, 1982—the 70th anniversary, college-trained historians tell us, of the sinking of RMS Titanic, one of the 66 Great Marine Disasters commemorated in this never-yet-offered series, each individually bronzed, annealed, Martinized, and hickory-cured by skilled artisans working under the supervision of the Tulane University Board of Regents.
Please note that each comes wrapped in authentic North Atlantic seaweed, its salt content confirmed by affidavit.
Best of all, you need not order. Simply steal a new Rolls-Royce, fence it, and turn the bills into small denominations of used money (U.S. currency only, please). No salesman will call. The Polk McKinley Harding Coolidge Mint is not a U.S. Government body. This is not an offering.
The Polk McKinley Harding Coolidge Mint
P.S. If you have already begun your Napkin Rings of the State Supreme Court Dining Rooms collection, please disregard.
1981
FRANK CAMMUSO AND HART SEELY
OLDFINGER
YES, sir, what’ll it be?
Diet Sprite with a slice of lemon.
Shaken, not stirred.
Coming up, Mr.…
Bond. James Bond.
And what brings you to Days Inn, Mr. Bond?
Wish I could say a holiday. Actually, I’m in town to see a lawyer. I’m being sued. Sexual harassment, of all things! Eight cases.
Good God, eight? Why, once is happenstance—
Yes, yes, I know, twice is coincidence, and eight is a bloody massacre. Say, do I know you? Never mind. Eight cases. How can you be charged for such a thing by someone named Pussy Galore? You should see the docket. Thumper v. Bond. Octopussy v. Bond. Once they dreamed of becoming Mrs. James Bond. Now they hyphenate their names. It’s Ms. Kissy Suzuki-Feldstein. Now they’ve got careers. It’s Professor Holly Goodhead. Honey Ryder, M.D. God help the poor chap who unzips her gown during a physical. Back then we didn’t call her Dr. No. I’m just tired of it all.
You do look fatigued.
Shouldn’t I be? It doesn’t matter that I saved England. Who cares that I stopped SPECTRE from developing its diamond-laser ray-gun death satellite? You’d think they’d thank me, but all they say is “He can’t work with women. He has to control them.” I can assure you those women never complained when we were alone. You should read their petty allegations: “During tour of stable, defendant abruptly threw plaintiff into hay, rolled onto plaintiff, and employed physical force to kiss plaintiff on mouth.” Remember, now, these were exotic beauties; these were Bond girls! We’re not talking about fondling Irma Bunt. You won’t believe what else they’re saying. That I’m a repressed homosexual! That I hate women! That I can’t control my libido, that I’m a walking hormone, and that everything I say is a double-entendre about sex. Well, I find it all hard to swallow. They forced me to join AA. My travel budget is shot. They don’t even let me smoke in the building. You try standing in the cold rain sixty times a day! I’ve been waiting two months for blood-test results. You’d think the mails were sabotaged by Russian agents—if there were Russian agents! But what riles me most is the secretaries. One
has even become my boss. These days, on Her Majesty’s Secret Service, M stands for Moneypenny!
You guard the Queen, Mr. Bond?
Queen? Hah. Try Fergie. God, just saying the name is like having a tarantula crawl across my chest. I was on the beach that day she dropped her top. In my Benzedrine nightmares, I used to see Pistols Scaramanga’s third nipple. Now I see that odious Texan kissing her toes. I should have left with my old boss.
And where is he now?
Here in the States. He’s a lobbyist for the Heritage Foundation—works with my old CIA counterpart Felix Leiter.
Not the Felix Leiter?
That’s right. The next senator from Virginia. Actually, I haven’t seen him in years. No time. I get weekends with the kids, you know. Traded the Aston Martin for a minivan. Q Branch added some extras. I haven’t had to use the toddler-ejection seats, but the sleeping gas works wonders. Say, you do look familiar.
What if I remove this mustache, Mr. Bond?
Goldfinger! But I saw you squirt out that airplane window! How did you survive the fall?
Simple, 007. You should know I’d never fly without my golden parachute. I floated to the ground and adopted a new precious metal. Ever heard of Silverado Savings & Loan? Ha-ha-ha. I never needed to rob Fort Knox. The U.S. government gave it to me. But my best luck was being caught. I served a mere six months in federal prisons. Blofeld was there. Milken! Boesky! Pete Rose! We’ve rebuilt SPECTRE, Mr. Bond. And this time we want your help.
You’re mad, Goldfinger, insane! You should know I’d never—Well, what, exactly, do you have in mind?
Talk shows. Sally. Oprah. Donahue. We’re controlling the airwaves. Our topic is white-male persecution. Your assignment: To go public with your pain. To describe your suffering. To expose your oppression. It’s perfect—the white male as victim. If we can turn back the clock there, we can restore everything—even the Cold War!
Damn it all, I’ll do it. A toast to the old days, Goldfinger!
Sorry, but I have other customers. Another time, perhaps. Until then—good-bye, Mr. Bond.
1993
JOHN KENNEY
THE LAST CATALOGUE
Retailer J. Peterman Files for Bankruptcy
—The New York Times, January 26, 1999
WHAT IS IT ABOUT A WASTEPAPER BASKET?
Hemingway used one. So did Scott Fitzgerald. The last tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, used one all the time before that nasty business at Yekaterinburg. “It” was a simple wastepaper basket, or “basque,” as the French say. Perfect for throwing things away, as long as the “things” aren’t too big. You can put it near a desk, or not. You can throw drafts of your novel or receipts from a store into it. The old, great ones were round, sturdy, made of strong woven wire. We found one just like it. Sort of. Ours is plastic and slightly scuffed.
Color: Prison gray.
Price: $125.
IS IT POSSIBLE TO LOVE A WATER COOLER?
Somewhere it is 1947. The country is back to work. The war is over. The “boys” are home. Everyone’s wearing hats, even children. People eat lunch at Automats. Things are “Martinized.” Cars are huge. Gravy is put on everything. And water coolers. Down at the end of the hall. In every office in America. Big, blue-green glass bottles holding clean, cold, crisp water. And by its side a long metal tube dispensing delicate conical paper cups so small that you have to fill one six or eight times for a satisfying drink. No matter. We’ve found one exactly like those old ones. Only in plastic. And empty. But you can fill it. How, we don’t know. But good luck to you.
Price: $450.
A GENTLEMAN ALWAYS HAS REAMS OF PAPER HANDY.
I was talking once with the former Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson, and I asked her what it was that made her fall in love with the King. She said—I’ll never forget this—“Paper. He always has reams and reams of paper handy.” No surprise there. Helen of Troy is said to have had the same weakness. Years ago, the really great paper was made from trees. We’ve found some just like that, reproduced perfectly. Packed neatly in stacks of five hundred sheets. Ten tidily wrapped packages to a box. Ideal for home or office.
Price: $85 per box.
HOW’S YOUR SHELVING?
Once, many years ago, a young man—say, a member of an Indian tribe somewhere out in the West where Indians lived—would leave his village on the eve of his sixteenth birthday and wander alone into the woods without food, water, or clothes. He was not allowed to return to the village until he had built himself some nice shelves. True story, I think. The Indian shelves were made of pine or oak or some other wood. We’ve searched the world for the same kind. Found a pressed polyvibrafoam reproduction that looks just like it right here in Kentucky.
Price: $230. (Brackets with metal screws: $65 each.)
DON’T JUDGE A MAN UNTIL YOU’VE WALKED A MILE ON HIS INDUSTRIAL CARPETING.
Garbo was obsessed with it. Jack Kennedy is said to have wooed Marilyn on it. Noël Coward wrote a play about it, though there’s no “evidence” of that. The classic postwar industrial carpeting was thin, flimsy, and badly soiled. We’ve managed to locate a cache of just such a product. Yards of it, all brownish-gray, rolled up on huge spools near our loading dock.
Color: Army-mess-hall-beef brown.
Price: $18 sq. yd.
NEED ANY TONER?
I had just survived a nasty mishap when my single-engine Piper PA-28 Cherokee crashed in Egypt and I was laid up in a Cairo hospital. My nurse, a Bedouin, had wandered away into the night and was nowhere to be found. A fire broke out and I managed to drag myself to safety, only to be set upon by Israeli Mossad agents. I was interrogated for three days somewhere in the Negev, giving them only my name, my occupation, and my thoughts on the wholesale potential of a near-perfect replica of the Israeli Air Force beret. What this has to do with the fact that we have twelve gross of toner cartridges, I don’t know. But we do. And they’re for sale.
Color: Inky black.
Price: Make me an offer.
1999
STEVE MARTIN
THE ETHICIST
DEAR Ethicist:
Last week, while putting a man to death (I’m an executioner at a state prison), I noticed that several spectators were doing “the wave.” I felt that this was wrong, so afterward I executed them, too. Then I asked their spouses to join me for dinner. Here’s my question: When giving a dinner at home, is it the host’s responsibility to serve healthful, low-calorie food?
When you are serving dinner to guests, remember that they are essentially a captive food audience. So, yes, it is wrong to offer only rich, fatty food. Generally, a host should ask his guests about their dietary preferences in advance—something you did not have time to do—or he should offer healthy alternatives.
My wife and I were at a restaurant on our anniversary and when I paid the bill I noticed that two numbers had been inverted, causing the total to be nine dollars more than what I owed. I went ahead and paid it. Was I wrong?
Sometimes this column gets letters so heinous that I question whether they should be published at all. The letter above was unsigned, naturally—a sure mark of a coward. I offer it here as a reminder that this must never happen again, anywhere, ever. Now let me answer the question: I have no idea.
I have recently written two biographies of the same famous politician. One is intentionally filled with disgusting lies; the other is based solely on truth. The problem is, they are identical. Which one should I publish?
The key word in your question is that the lies are “intentional.” Your admitted intention makes the first biography wholly honest, whereas there might be errors in the one based on fact. Publish the one with the disgusting lies.
My wife is having an affair with a bartender, and I have been secretly filming her and her lover having intercourse. I then sell the tapes on the floor of the stock exchange. I would like her to be more wrong than I am. Who is more wrong?
She is more wrong. Her immoral actions have enabled your own
immoral actions. Without her, you would not have committed your immoral act. Once I pushed a conflicted suicide off a bridge, and I felt fine afterward, because his action had engendered mine. I knew I was “less wrong” than he was, and I walked with a spring in my step for the rest of the day.
I am going to a country where it is legal and socially acceptable to eat people. I would like to eat my brother-in-law, who will be on the trip with me and is Canadian. I am from Iowa. Would this be ethical?
I am sure cannibalism is illegal in Iowa, but I’m not sure about Canada. I would suggest you stop in Canada first, take your brother-in-law to a police station and eat his foot, and see if anyone objects. If not, you can feel assured that the complete ingestion of your brother-in-law in a permissive country is perfectly ethical.
After I was banned from my nine-year-old son’s Little League playing field, I began teaching him to scream at his coach. I would like to encourage him to include profanity in these adorable tirades, but, as it is banned from our household, would this make me a hypocrite?
You have created a philosophical conundrum. What happens when two contradictory moral laws seem to be in effect at the same time? Bertrand Russell said that it is possible for one law to indicate the truth or falsehood of another, even though the two contradict each other. However, it should be noted that in 1948 Russell entered into a lifelong feud over the issue with a Magic 8 Ball, which said, “Reply hazy, try again.”
Disquiet, Please! Page 29
